When what makes sense doesn’t actually work

In a certain celebrity matchmaking universe, Ellen Page + Jesse Eisenberg would constitute a duh, oh yeah, totally slamdunk. Look at those quirky hipsters with their weird ticks, and the way they both speedtalk, and he hasn’t watched tv or a movie since 1988 and neither has she because they spend all their time collecting chairs with only 3 legs and reading Kant! They belong together!

Except, as is often the case when two people totally belong together on paper, when you put them together it becomes kinda ...lifeless. Right? Like when the head cheerleader and the quarterback get together. Ellen and Jesse, for some, in a contained circle, are the head cheerleader and the quarterback of wannabe counter-culture.

Here they are in Rome on the set of Woody Allen’s The Bop Decameron playing, hilariously, either lovers or siblings, and proving that sometimes what you think makes sense doesn’t actually work. I like them both, a lot, individually, in spite of their occasional eyerolly-ness, but no, it doesn’t work at all. In real life, I mean. As a casting decision? Sure.